Recognizing Stalactites and Stalagmites of ELT Vodcasting in Teacher Education Based on Activity Theory and Visual Thinking Strategies

Abstract

Teachers need to know new applications for developing online materials and then they should become aware of different ways to present them to online audience. This study tries to help ELT teachers to overcome challenges and difficulties of vodcasting by recognizing their social and biological motives (Activity Theory), and using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). It can alter teachers' negative attitudes towards online materials development via providing useful tools and techniques to become better producers of their knowledge to survive professionally. This QUAL-quan inquiry initiated with 10 University professors of Islamic Azad University-South Tehran Branch. All these participants answered ‘Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)' questionnaire, ‘Personality Test and Job Satisfaction', ‘Three-D Test', and ‘Spatial Recognition Test'. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with those whose data were grounded and initiated from open coding, down to axial coding, and finalized with selective coding. Participants produced vodcasts as pre-test. Then, they received the treatments on an exclusively launched ‘MArt' Telegram group in the form of the researcher-designed audios and videos and YouTube samples. As a post-test, each of the participants made another vodcast. Then, two experts who are ELT university lecturers evaluated the two sets of recorded data. Finally, all the interpretations and analyses were presented in different graphs and charts along with researcher's interpretation based on theoretical frameworks. The results show that whether ELT teachers are capable of producing vodcasts or not. Besides, VTS help teachers to become much more visually literate and produce more successful vodcasts. Both treatments of the present study and the derived codes can be used in teacher education, and they can turn into a task-based digital or paper-based coursebooks benefiting M.A. TEFL students.